


Safety in Flames

by Vidjauser



Category: A Plague Tale: Innocence (Video Game)
Genre: Action, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Battle Couple, Blood and Injury, Canon Related, Canon Rewrite, Comfort, F/M, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, I ship them, Injury, Injury Recovery, Major Character Injury, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Oneshot, Pain, Pairings, Plague, Rats, Romance, Soldiers, War, cute couple, fight, i love them, i want them to be together, pair, platonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:55:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23209627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vidjauser/pseuds/Vidjauser
Summary: After Amicia is hurt by a pair of guards trying to escape with Rodric, the blacksmith’s son has to step up to save his new friend’s life. If he doesn’t succeed, then he would lose more than just one life.
Relationships: Rodric/Amicia de Rune
Comments: 3
Kudos: 43





	Safety in Flames

**Author's Note:**

> I really love this pair? They deserved so much more.

The Cathedral was burning, smoldering both Amicia and Rodric with killer smoke that was worse than the soldiers that were chasing them. The young noble held the Sanguinis Itinera close to her mouth as some sort of protector, coughing into it, just barely able to open her teary eyes. Yet, they had to run and get out of the fire before it consumed them and turned them into a pile of ash. What was once a gorgeous university was now in flames, and it was their fault. 

“Hurry, Rodric! We have to run faster!” Amicia dodged some roaring flames, now covering her eyes. She struggled to breathe. 

“I’m trying, Amicia!” Rodric coughed into his glove and used it to protect his face from the destruction around them. He was far ahead of the other, pretty much leading the way through the catastrophe. He dodged a shelf as it collapsed, sending boards down where he could have been. He would have been dead if he had been a second fast, putting him in a situation where he did not know whether to go faster or slower. His heart was racing for its life. 

Rodric had to stop for a moment, to look behind him for the slower Amicia. He raked his finger through his dark and sweaty hair. Amicia was catching up with him, but it did not make him feel any better. 

The floor above them creaked a couple of times, catching his attention. He peered up with wide eyes and immediately knew doom was to come. The ceiling crashed in: beams fell, forcing Amicia to jump back in the knick of time. Rodric was far ahead and spun around, his eyes going wide. “Amicia!” he called out with his hands cupping his mouth. “Are you alright?”

“Yes, I am! But Rodric… I’m stuck back here!” the girl panicked and squeezed the book closer to her chest protectively. 

When Amicia had left with Mélie, she did not expect that it would lead her to burn down a whole building, let alone imagining herself dying in that same building. She knew what fire did to someone. It consumed their flesh and either smothered them alive or painfully burned them until the agonizing end. This was not how she wanted to die, and not how she wanted her little brother to die as well: the book and her brother’s life rested in her hands, and she was determined to keep it that way. 

The determined noble blinked away tears, looking beyond the beams to see Rodric waiting for her on the other side, waving his hand to keep the smoke from billowing in his face. 

It was not just the fire after them, but the guards who had been chasing them were starting to catch up. 

“Get them!”

“They’re right there!”

Nearly with her mouth open, Amicia swung around. She knew for sure that the soldiers were not that far behind from them. The beam had slowed them down, and surely she would die now… but the book did not. 

Amicia turned back to the beam and approached it, feeling the consuming fire nearly burned her eyebrows off. “Rodric, can you hear me?”

“Don’t worry, Amica. I will get you over here,” the male said as he moved around the beams and pieces of fallen ceiling, looking for a passage he could make for his friend.

“Wait, Rodric, please,” she beckoned for him with her fingers poking through the beams, ignoring the pain that burned her arm. 

“What are you doing, Amicia?”

“I need you to take the book back to my little brother. He needs it more than he needs me.”

“What are you talking about? Don’t talk like that, I’m going to get you out of there.”

“There’s no time. The guards are almost here.” She looked down at her book and wrapped it up with as much leather as she could from her limited clothing. Before Rodric could protest her more, she shoved it through the biggest opening. The book fell through with a little force. Rodric scrambling to grab it before it hit the ground. He looked to Amicia, saddened, just knowing he could get her out if she would just let him.

To Amicia, the fire felt like a jail cell. She believed that for a moment, she was back at the Inquisition camp, locked up before the twins came to save her. She stepped closer and glared at Rodric through the cracks. “Follow the Aqueduct. There’s a path of dead soldiers, I’m sure. You with fill our château there… And if you see my brother.” Her eyes teared up but it was impossible to tell if it was from her emotions or from the fire. “Tell him that I love him.” 

Rodric just wasn’t going to let this happen— 

“There she is! Get the whore!”

Amicia whipped around. The guards were in the room. They had caught up to them. She swung back around and yelled at Rodric, “Rodric, please get out of here! Go now!”

“Not without you, Amicia—” He teetered between stepping back or stepping forward. 

But the guards were already there. The first one with a helmen grabbed Amicia’s braid, yanking the girl back until it looked like her neck snapped from the snag. Amicia yelped, looking up to the guard with fear while grabbing the top of her prickling scalp. They grinned down at her and lifted their sword, pulling it back toward her. She squirmed when the sword pricked her, causing it to messily and painfully glide into the flesh of her side. When piercing her side with the weapon, they laughed and threw her forward. Amicia did not die and hit the ground with a suffering scream of pain.

“Amicia!” Rodric called out. A fit of abrupt anger boiled through him, worse than any other inferno around him could. “You bastard swine!” he cursed to the soldiers, swearing almost that the spit from his snarl could extinguish the flames. He grabbed at the fire of the beam, that was no longer hurting him or the adrenaline flowing throughout his body. 

The soldiers laughed at the male orphan, ignoring their environment while pointing at him. “What are you going to do?” they mocked him, “Kill us with no weapon? It’s too late, the bitch is almost dead.” They kicked her side, forcing Amicia to release one more whimper before her muscles gave out, no longer supporting her. 

Without much of a thought, the raging bull of a boy growled and tossed the book to the side. He looked around him before grabbing the end of something metal and hot, his gloved hand protecting him somewhat while his other hand felt numb. He charged the flaming boards that had blocked him from his friend and collided into them with all the force of his body. Slamming into them and causing them to break under his weight but not slow him down enough to continue charging the soldiers. The soldiers gasped, not expecting any of the sorts: Rodric held the hot metal and jabbed in into an unprotected bit of flesh of one of the soldiers. The first soldier—the one that had stabbed Amicia—dropped dead, allowing for Rodric to grab his sword and stab the second soldier without much of a second to spare. He dropped the bloodied blade, panting, and looked down to Amicia. She was still breathing, but very much bleeding out on the spot and possibly suffocating to death. 

“Gods, no!” the male gasped, choking for a moment from the smoke. He would not have her death on his hands. He crouched as low as he could to the ground and read her unmoving face. He grabbed it, checking under her neck. She still had some life in her, but the wound the grazed her side was stealing it from her. 

Rodric looked to the blade of the other guard, seeing it rest in the flames after having been released from the soldier’s control. If he learned one thing from all his years as an apprentice blacksmith: it was this. He grabbed it unknowingly and lifted Amicia’s tunic enough to see her wound. “God, forgive me for what I am about to do,” he said with his head raised to the broke ceiling before he promptly pressed the hot metal against her wound to cauterize it. He was quick, trying to beat the flames before it would beat them. 

Amicia’s eyes shot open and she screamed. She clawed at Rodric’s hand but he did not budge until he thought the wound was closed. When he believed it to be over, he threw the sword aside, praising that it had been a stab in her side and not in her organs. 

“I am so sorry, Amicia,” he apologized for the pains before he lifted her into his arms to carry her. Her head lolled, and she fell unconscious under his neck once again. He couldn’t believe this was happening. 

Rushing out of the increasing fire, he grabbed the book before sprinting out of the house, hoping that he made it out in time that Amicia or the book wasn’t too damaged. 

If Amicia died, what would he do? Would he actually find the Château she talked about and save her brother? If he did not make it, would her brother survive? So many thoughts terrorized his mind, and that would not be the last of it, 

Rodric escaped the house and embraced the fresh air. He lifted Amicia’s head, ensuring that she could breathe it in too.

“You’re not dying on me,” he threatened. 

In the back of an alley that shielded them from the eyes of others, Rodric laid Amicia down. The young male held the back of her head as he laid it down carefully on the red cloth he kept tucked in his belt. He wouldn’t want to hurt her further. They had just barely made it out of the fire, and it was now his responsibility to take care of the girl: he checked over her body carefully, especially over the cauterized burn mark he scorched across her skin. He tried not to feel too guilty there as it probably saved her life as she did not bleed out. 

With the ashes of the fire, it looked as though death had already personally painted her into its masterpiece. Rodric took the book and used it as more leverage under her head. Then he ran a hand down her face, wiping away the ashes around her mouth. “I am going to take care of you,” he promised before he began to do so. He cleaned her face the best that he could before he searched the area for some supplies. In Amicia’s pocket, was a flask of her water, luckily untouched from the fiasco. He made sure it wasn’t too hot before gently rubbing her forehead with it in gentle circular motions. 

“Those bastards won’t get us here. It’s safe to wake up now.” He moved her hair, seeing that some of the fire singed the end of it. He could tell that slowly that her braid was unraveling from what he assumed was once a gorgeous hairstyle. 

The action caused the girl to awaken. The action was gentle and reminded her of her father’s tough and calloused hand soothing her to sleep after a nightmare long before Hugo had been born. Though now, it was the complete opposite. She opened her eyes just barely, looking up to the male with disoriented vision. 

“Rodric…?” she asked before she rasped, her throat sore from the fire. 

Rodric’s eyes widened happily as he saw that the girl had responded. He rushed to get closer to her.

Amicia touched her chapped lips with a weak hand. “I’m so thirsty… It’s like I haven’t drunk for years,” she croaked.

“Let me fix that for you,” he said kindly before handing her flask back to her. He held the back of her head gently and helped her take a sip of her water. He watched her with his careful eyes. 

After sucking down half the water, Amica pushed the flask of water away and coughed. Maybe she had drunk too fast because it was not agreeing with her. Her eyes closed briefly before she opened them, looking up into the eyes of Rodric tiredly. Then she looked over his face and saw a huge difference—above his eye was a large burn mark. “What happened…?” For her, everything seemed like a blur, and the memory uncertain. Had she watched him get burned? However, with her fingers lingering over her side, she was sure that something had happened between her and a soldier eventually as her attention span was dragged in every direction. 

“Nevermind me, Amicia. You were attacked,” Rodric confirmed her fears. He allowed her to lean against his knee as she recovered her energy gradually. “The soldiers attacked you.”

The exhausted teen released a broken sigh. “What happened Did you save me?” 

“I managed to knock down the beams to get through to you, and killed the bastards who did this to you.”

“And we made it?” she asked, feeling more disoriented. 

“Yeah, but just barely.

Amicia touched her chest, looking up to the night sky. Everything felt so unclear to her. Then, she realized that something was missing. She moved her sight from the blue sky to Rodric’s brown eyes. “Is the book OK?” she asked, and it was though she did not care that she almost died. God curse her if the book was lost. God smite her if she caused her brother to suffer because she allowed herself to be taken down by a soldier. 

Rodric felt relieved. He nodded. The young lad did not like that Amicia sounded like she was in a lot of pain from merely speaking, but at least she was fine. She was talking, and she was breathing more importantly. However, the lady was worried about someone else, and he needed to tend to that. She was taking a clear responsibility as an older sister, even if meant sacrificing her life. For some reason, that did not settle well in his stomach. The thought of his new and only friend dying did not suit him. He ran his hand over her head as he reached back— his fingers brushing against the book just barely. 

“Everything is fine, Amicia. I got the book out of the fire. It is fine,” he said and watched relief fill her eyes. He added in a serious tone and almost held both sides of her face to emphasize it, “But I just barely got you.”

Amicia’s lips parted, but she said nothing as they gandered into each other’s eyes, lost in them. Then, she was filled with tears. “Thank you, Rodric?”

“What for?”

“You didn’t just save my life, but you saved my brother’s as well. I am forever in your debt…”

“I don’t want to be in your debt. We’re friends, and friends save each other for free, dont’cha think? Besides… if anyone was in anyone’s debt, it would be me, since you saved my ass as well.”

“It looks like we are even then.” Amicia laughed softly, trying to be careful as every movement ached her to the core. 

“Do you feel well enough to give me directions back to your little Château?” he asked.

For a moment, he did not know if she would answer. The girl had closed her eyes: her face was calm, and she said nothing. However, after contemplating, she saw to him and answered, “Yeah, but I don’t think I can walk for right now. Do you think that you can carry me?”

A smug tug of his lips said yes before he could. “I think you already know the answer, Amicia. Let’s get you home, aye?”

Rodric helped his helpless teen to her side, but before he could haul her up on his back, she stopped him by placing her hand right under his left shoulder blade. “Wait,” she told him and he stopped. Amicia took the red cloth off the ground and then the book. She wrapped it around his torso, confusing Rodric a little before she tucked the book before the folds of the cloth and his back. Oh, now he saw what she was doing. He grinned at her.

“Smart move,” he complimented her. 

“Thank you.” She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “We have to hide the book somehow.”

“You’re right. Not that I would let anything happen to either you or the book. Now climb up on my back,” he said as he patted his thigh. The girl listened and did her best to move her front against his back despite the searing pain: she wrapped her arms around his neck and almost instantly, he placed his strong hands under her bottom to lift her up. Amicia leaned her head against the back of his and now she knew why Hugo felt so relaxed when she held him all those times. She felt very much loved and appreciated. Even safe. 


End file.
